Things We Hold On To
by LyricalEcho
Summary: The story of how a small-town Minnesota girl became one of the most successful people in Hollywood, and a whole lot of things that happened in between. James/Carlos, Kendall/Logan, some implied OT4, Jo/Camille if you squint. Oneshot.


**A/N: I think between this and Growing Up Invisible I might just be turning into the girl who writes stories about sisters, but anyways! I love Katie a lot- between Fans and Crush and Beach Party I think she's just been getting more and more awesome as the series goes on- and I feel like she deserves more attention in fandom. This is my attempt to remedy that. Hopefully it's a successful one! (Um, also, this was originally planned to be a oneshot, but as I was writing it I started having some Ideas about Kelly, so... it's possible this could turn into a series about the ~ladies~ of BTR. We'll see.)**

For a brief period in Katie's life, she was honestly convinced that she had four older brothers.

(One day, in fact, she finds a picture she drew in preschool of all six of them, together, titled "My Family"; she rolls her eyes but takes it and keeps it in her desk drawer anyways. Just in case.)

It didn't take her too long to figure out that Carlos and James and Logan had families besides her and her mother, of course, but now with all of them living together even _that's_ ceased to matter; and so when Kyle tells her, during a Castle Bashers tournament, "Your brother's really protective," she spends several seconds trying to figure out how to explain things to him before settling on, "Yeah, he is."

It's strange how right it feels saying it.

* * *

Katie's always known she's not quite normal. Even without the absent father, even without the family situation that she can never quite describe; she's still never been a normal girl, not exactly. And maybe that's because of James and Carlos and Logan and Kendall, but she likes to imagine part of it is just her.

(By the time she reaches second grade, though, she's decided she's bored with being the one who sits in the back of the classroom and reads things that are way above her grade level, so on the first day of school she organizes a schoolwide kickball tournament and takes bets on the winners—she and Kendall put half of her earnings into buying their mother a birthday present, and she keeps the other half in a jar on her dresser.

She's never been prouder of anything.)

* * *

On the day when Kendall finally stops being an idiot and tells Gustavo _yes_—the day that Katie overhears him, breathless, on the phone, _hey, Mom, I, I said yes_—their mother sits her down and explains that Hollywood is a Very Different Place from Minnesota, that it's going to be a Pretty Major Change, that if Katie needs Any Help Adjusting she'll be There For Her.

She's too excited to even try to milk the moment for sympathy. "That's great, Mom, thanks," she says, and she's packed in twenty minutes.

At school, the day before their flight, she lets everyone know she's leaving as casually as possible; most of them already know anyway.

"I might meet Dak Zevon," she tells Melissa Mansfield, like it's no big deal, and Melissa just rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, _right_," she says. "Good luck with that one."

One year later, Melissa receives a manila envelope in the mail. The return address is from the Palmwoods Hotel. Inside is a scanned photo of Katie Knight and Dak Zevon, both smiling.

_I told you so_, it says on the back.

* * *

There's a limo waiting when their flight lands, and the boys stare at it in open-mouthed wonder for several seconds before Katie's mother rolls her eyes.

"Oh, fine," she says. "You four can go ahead. We'll take a taxi."

"_Hey_," says Katie, and her mother elbows her gently—and, well, the four of them look so thrilled they're about to faint, so maybe letting them have their moment is best.

So Katie and Mrs. Knight take a taxi, by themselves; and Katie, despite her nonchalance, despite all of her practiced efforts to keep her cool during the flight, nearly falls out of the window at the sight of the Hollywood sign.

She glances back over her shoulder at her mother, who just smiles knowingly. "Hard to believe, huh?" she says, and Katie nods and turns back to the window.

They meet up with the boys at the Palmwoods—home, she tells herself, without hesitation—and though Kendall is skeptical and Logan is nervous and Carlos is overwhelmed, James leans over to her and whispers confidentially, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"…Yeah," she murmurs back, after long consideration. "It is."

* * *

She's not quite sure exactly where along the line talent management became exactly the field for her, but she's fairly certain it happened within the first week of her arrival at the Palmwoods, and maybe within the first few days; that somewhere in between her extremely profitable VIP area and Tyler's mother fussing endlessly about how hard it is to find him a job, she has the idea that defines the rest of her life. (For most people, it would be as difficult an industry to break into as any other in Hollywood—but, well, most people aren't Katie Knight, and most people don't have the particular advantage of spending every day in the Home of the Future Famous.)

It starts out small enough; she reads everything she can online. She pays attention to people when they mention they're struggling with finding jobs, and she adds as casually as possible that for a very modest fee she would be willing to offer her expert opinion. Not everyone pays attention, of course, because she's still the new girl and because she's ten, but as her scattered clients begin reporting more and more success she starts hearing her name mentioned on something like a regular basis.

She makes mockups of "Knight Management" business cards but doesn't show them to anyone just yet. She thinks she could get used to this.

* * *

"Katie?" James says, looking up from his meticulous application of tanning lotion. "Can I ask you something?"

It's mid-afternoon, and the two of them are alone by the pool because Kendall and Logan are out doing god-knows-what and Carlos has decided that this is going to be his lucky day with the Jennifers.

"You can try," says Katie, not looking up from the latest issue of Tiger Beat. (Just to assess various marketing strategies, of course; she's planning to start charging Gustavo for her PR advice.)

James rolls over so he's facing her and furrows his brow in scrutiny. "…Do you _really_ not have a crush on me?" he says finally.

Katie glares at him. "I _really_ don't," she says.

James puts on his most impressive pout. "_Really?_"

Katie nods.

"…Why?" he says.

Katie rolls her eyes. "Do you seriously want to know?" she says, and he nods, earnest. "James, I've known you practically since I was born. You're not some popstar with nice hair; you're the guy who's had dinner over my house three times a week for as long as I can remember and who borrows the stupid fashion magazines that my grandmother always buys me for Christmas and who broke my Barbie when I was three and then blamed it on Logan. Also," she adds, as an afterthought, "because I've seen the way you look at Carlos."

James looks more than a little startled the whole time, but at the last one he nearly falls out of his pool chair. "_…What_?" he says. "I mean—you—how did—you're not supposed to—"

Katie rolls her eyes and returns to her magazines. "I'm ten, dude," she says, "not blind."

James gapes at her for another thirteen seconds before slowly going back to his tanning lotion. They don't speak of it again.

* * *

She isn't quite sure what to make of Jo, at first. Part of it is that she's not quite sure why anyone would willingly date _Kendall_, of all people, but she's a little sister and that's her obligation. More of it, maybe, is that Kendall's dated girls before but he's never had a _girlfriend_, not one like Jo, not one that he talks about all the time and definitely not one that's ever invaded the space the four of them have created—the space that Katie's always been part of, a little.

She doesn't _avoid_ Jo, as a result—not the way Logan seems to—but she stays enough on Jo's fringes that it's a while before she hears the full story of Jo's arrival, how she pretended she already had her boyfriend because her career came first, and that's when Katie thinks she gets it, because choosing ambition over a normal life is familiar to her, to say the least.

So the next day, as Jo is perched poolside and as Kendall is pulled away by the other three in a flurry of limbs and frenetic explanations and hurried apologies, Katie makes a point of sitting down next to her.

"Hey," she says, and Jo nods, fixated straight ahead on the boys' retreating figures.

"…Are they always like this?" she asks finally, and Katie looks, then, to where Kendall's hand brushes casually over Logan's back, to where Carlos has one hand on Kendall's forearm and the other on James's shoulder and all of them are acting like it's the most natural thing in the world.

She considers; it's never occurred to her to wonder about this before, which is maybe telling in and of itself. There's no specific moment in her memory where the looks and touches exchanged between them became _looks_ and _touches_, and she has difficulty remembering anything before the private smiles Carlos exchanges to James or the long glances Kendall sends to Logan—before her family got complicated.

"Yeah," she tells Jo. "They kind of are."

Jo sighs.

"You get used to it after a while," Katie offers, and Jo looks at her with a cryptic half-smile.

"…I'm not sure it's even my place to be getting used to it," she says, and then Katie really, truly understands.

* * *

Once the band is making money—real, actual money, the kind of money none of them had ever really considered—Kendall starts secretly putting part of it away as retirement savings for their mother and another part into Katie's college fund. She pretends she doesn't notice the first two times he does it, but after that she pulls him aside.

"Give Mom the money," she tells him seriously, and he blinks at her.

"But—" he starts.

"_Please_," she interrupts, rolling her eyes. "You think I can't save up for college by myself?"

He nods, after a moment, and agrees. He still puts some in there, from time to time, but she decides to let that go.

* * *

She never considers Russell Brand to be her "big break," even though… well, even though he sort of is. There's some press commotion about it for a while—it's widely considered a publicity stunt, but an effective one—and she manages to score a few online interviews before the interest fades, and she's widely forgotten.

She tries not to let it bother her too much; this is just one step out of many, after all.

(And even though Russell Brand is her first real, legitimate client, he's not the first person to sign his name to a Knight Management contract: in the back of her Managing Binder, there's a document in amateur legalese with "J*D" scrawled grandiose across the bottom. It's another thing she and James don't discuss after the fact, but she doesn't doubt his future solo career any more than he doubts her management abilities, and it's understood that they'll know what to do when they come to it.)

* * *

Everything keeps moving forward. To say that the more things change the more they stay the same feels frustratingly like a cliché to her, but she's not quite sure how else to describe the way things are. The boys are busier by the day, and the _looks_ and the _touches_ seem to take on a whole new significance, and now even non-Palmwoods kids are stopping by the apartment to ask Katie for help; but Logan still quotes Aristotle, and Carlos would still do anything for a corndog, and James saves every article that ever mentions them and complains that the photos don't show his good side. Katie scoffs at him once, and he smirks back.

"You're just jealous because we're famous and you're not," he says.

"Oh, you wish," says Katie. "I think _you're_ jealous because someday I'm going to be richer than all of you put together."

"…Yeah," he says, after considering this, "you're probably right."

(He doesn't sound like it bothers him too much, but it's never been about being rich for James.)

* * *

She's used to getting the four of them out of trouble, not out of any specific obligation but because it's just how they work. Kendall and the others look out for her, and Katie tasers security guards and distracts Gustavo and rescues James from dog cages. It's what she does.

So on the day that the paparazzi happen to catch a photo of Kendall and Logan holding hands on the sidewalk, she knows, again, what she has to do.

Carlos sees it first, because like every morning he wakes up first and logs onto Scuttlebutter; when Katie comes into the kitchen he's staring at the screen in mute horror.

"Um," he says. "This—I—I think we might have a problem."

She glances to the picture to Carlos—still dumbstruck—and then turns at once to go wake up the others. Things… kind of go downhill from there. Kendall paces in front of the couch, mumbling fervently to himself and occasionally blurting out plans; Logan scrolls numbly through assorted gossip blogs until he's shaking so badly that James has to take the computer away from him; and Katie stays in the apartment for exactly fifteen minutes before she decides on a course of action.

She thinks Carlos notices her heading for the door, but if he does he doesn't say anything. She walks out of the Palmwoods, hails a taxi, and heads directly for Rocque Records.

She doesn't hear Gustavo shouting when she enters the building, which she takes as a bad sign. Gustavo shouting is normal—Gustavo quiet means something is very, very wrong. She hovers a moment when she reaches the door of the conference room—she hears Griffin's voice, commanding, and Gustavo's stammered protests—takes a deep breath to steel herself, and throws the door open.

(She's always wanted to do that.)

Inside, she takes stock of the room: Griffin and his assistants are at one end of the table with Gustavo and Kelly seated at the other, and strewn across between them are stacks of web printouts and more thick black binders than she's seen before in her life. She swallows.

"Can I help you?" says Griffin, after a long pause.

"Yes, actually," she says. "You can. Katie Knight, Knight Management." (Griffin's met her a few dozen times in the past three years, but she's not one to take chances.) "…I'm here to talk to you about Big Time Rush."

"Katie…" Kelly starts.

"I'm not sure that there's anything to talk about," says Griffin. Always the same deadly cheer.

"Oh, I think there is," Katie says, glancing quickly at the papers spread across the table. "Because I think you might be discussing the possibility of dropping Big Time Rush from your label—"

"We are," says Gustavo, through gritted teeth.

"—and I'm here to tell you why that's a bad idea," she finishes.

"Katie, I really don't—" Kelly says again, but Griffin waves a hand for silence.

"…Alright then," he says. "Tell me."

Katie takes another deep breath and flicks her hair over her shoulder. "Here's the thing," she says. "It's pretty difficult to be a cutting-edge company when your president's pushing two hundred. This band is the first thing in a while that's built you any sort of consumer base among the thirteen-to-nineteen demographic, and so far it's been _extremely_ lucrative." She looks at him coolly. "I don't think I need to tell you how significant that is. Now, you could fire them, make a few Midwestern parents happy, lose the majority of that demographic, and fade into obscurity. Or…" She pauses.

"…Or?" says Griffin.

"Or," she continues, "you keep them on. You lose the business of a handful of people, but you gain massive amounts of media attention, build a reputation as a progressive company that appeals to young, forward-thinking people, and start creating an entirely new image for yourself. Not to mention the fact that, on the _very_ slim chance this doesn't work, Big Time Rush will still be the most profitable thing to happen to this company in a _very_ long time."

Griffin is silent, apparently considering; Katie swallows again, straightens, and decides to add one last thing.

"…Also?" she says, voice quieter. "I know this doesn't matter to you, but if you fire them they're going to be absolutely devastated. And if that happens—well. I can't say when, and I can't say how, but I promise, _I will hurt you_."

Gustavo and Kelly are both staring at her now, and she takes a step back, nodding. "That's all I have to say," she says.

Griffin tilts his head at her for another long moment. "…Have you ever thought about being a CEO?" he says finally.

"Occasionally," says Katie. "I think my talents lie elsewhere, though."

"…Interesting," says Griffin, and then nods once to his assistants, and the three of them head out the door.

Kelly and Gustavo both turn to stare at Katie, in unified silent astonishment, and she isn't quite sure how to explain herself. "I should probably get going, too," she says at last, with a shrug, and heads out after Griffin and catches a taxi back.

When she walks back through the apartment door, James asks where she's been.

"I just needed some air," she replies, which is true.

The next day, Rocque Records and RCM-CBT-GlobalNet-Sanyoid release a statement saying that they've been nothing but pleased with the quality of Big Time Rush's work thus far, that corporation and band have sustained an excellent relationship and that they hope to continue to do so in the future. No one is fired. The media, as predicted, explodes. Everyone in 2-J breathes a collective sigh of relief.

It's Logan, this time, that Katie thinks she notices giving her a curious sideways glance, but no matter what thoughts he has he never brings them up, and Katie never tells any of them what happened in the studio. She doesn't feel like she has to.

It's just what she does.

* * *

When Katie is fourteen, Camille takes an extended trip to New York so she can try her hand at Broadway, leaving the Palmwoods with a series of melodramatic farewells and a promise to come back as soon as she can no matter what happens. (Jo goes with her to help with the move, a fact which surprises no one—and Katie can't quite pinpoint how the two of _them_ became what they are, either, but there it is.)

A few days later, she's beside the pool with the boys when her cell phone buzzes, and she blinks and realizes the number is Camille's.

"Hello?" she says, skipping the usual professionalism.

"Hey, Katie!" Camille chirps.

"…Is that Camille?" James says, looking up. Katie nods mutely and flaps a hand for silence.

"Wait, seriously?" says Logan.

"Tell her we say hi!" Carlos offers.

"_Shh!_" Katie hisses, and Camille giggles on the other end.

"Hi, guys," she says. "…But, um, actually, Katie, I had kind of a serious question for you."

"I'm listening," says Katie, sitting up a little straighter.

"…Well," Camille says. "Things are… things are sort of different here, you know. And it's not that I'm having trouble adjusting, but I guess… well, actually, I guess I'm having trouble adjusting. And the thing I'm realizing it's pretty hard to get by in a town you're not used to… without help, anyways. So I guess my question is: does that management offer still stand?"

"Always," Katie tells her, trying not to sound as excited as she is. "Keep talking."

* * *

After a while, Rocque Records is just as much of a second home to her as it is to the rest of them, so she doesn't think anything of it one day when the boys are recording and she breezes past Gustavo into his office.

"Hey, Gustavo, can I borrow a pen?" she calls, without waiting for a response. "Great, thanks."

"Hey—" says Gustavo, but by then she's already opening the top drawer of his desk.

And then she stops, because sitting there, in plain sight, is something that even _she's_ forgotten about: a stapled packet with a cover page that reads "Gustavo Rocque: A Report by Katie Knight."

She's still just staring at it when Gustavo comes into the room. "You _kept_ this?" she asks, astonished.

Gustavo rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. "…Yeah," he says after a while. "Your mom gave me a copy, so—"

Katie flips through it, remembering. "It wasn't even that _good_."

"Yeah, well," says Gustavo. "Nobody'd ever written a report about me before. Or, you know, since."

Katie stares at it for another long minute before placing it back on the desk, and she thinks, maybe, she understands.

"So, uh," says Gustavo quickly, "what did you need the pen for?"

"…Oh!" Katie says, grabbing one from the drawer. "Right. I have a couple hours until my meeting with my next client, so I thought I would leave a bunch of notes around to try and convince Bitters he's losing his mind."

Gustavo blinks at her. "…You're not really a normal girl," he says.

She grins. "That's what people keep telling me," she replies, as she heads past him and out the door.

* * *

One afternoon, she comes into the apartment to find Kendall sitting on the couch by himself, watching whatever terrible werewolf movie happens to be on SyFy.

"Hey," he calls over.

"Hey," she replies. "Aren't you supposed to be recording?"

"Sore throat," says Kendall, shaking his head. "Gustavo let me take the day off."

"Lucky you," Katie says, smiling, and seats herself next to him.

He smiles back at her, briefly; and then his eyes grow serious, and he reaches over to press the mute button. "Actually," he says, "there was something I wanted to talk to you about."

"…Okay," she says, wary; because this could be any number of things, with Kendall.

He seems to search for words for a minute, and then he looks at her. "…Well," he says, with a heavy exhale. "I guess I kind of wanted to say I'm sorry."

"…For _what_?" says Katie, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice, because of all the apologies Kendall's ever given, very few of them have ever needed to be directed at _her_.

"I've just—I've kind of been thinking," he says. "And, I mean… you never really had that many friends back home—"

"Back home—oh," she says, because it honestly takes her a second to remember any of them lived anywhere before here.

If Kendall notices, he doesn't say anything. "And between Dad leaving, and… whatever it is that's going on with the four of us, I just—it feels like there was never really anyone around to show you how normal relationships were supposed to _work_. Which, I mean, as your big brother, I guess that's part of my responsibility. And I just—" He sighs. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you never got to have a… a normal childhood, I guess."

And Katie feels guilty, but she can't help herself, and she starts laughing.

"…What's so funny?" says Kendall, more than a little bewildered.

"A 'normal childhood'?" she asks, leaning back. "Really, big brother?"

"Well, I mean," Kendall starts, and she laughs again.

"Kendall," she tells him, "I honestly don't care about having a normal childhood. I care about the childhood I _did_ have, which… I'm pretty sure it was the best one ever. And I want you to listen very carefully when I tell you this: I would never trade it, or you guys, or _any_ of this, for anything else. Okay?"

"…Okay," says Kendall, with something that's not quite relief.

"Plus," she adds, "you don't get to take credit for me not being normal." Kendall half-laughs at that, and she stands up. "…Anything else you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Not really," says Kendall; and then, quietly: "I think the band's probably going to be over soon."

He doesn't look at her as he says it; it's not something _sad_, not precisely, but it's something different from just the Way Things Are.

"…Yeah," says Katie. "I know."

* * *

Kendall's right; it's not long after that that they make the decision (collectively, like they make so many of their decisions) that it's about time for this to end.

It's a decision none of them know quite what to do with; it means that things start changing in dizzying and permanent ways but that their family is still the same as it's always been. Big Time Rush is over; a confusing mess of new things begin. James pulls Katie aside at one point and smiles his James-smile and says, "I think you and I have some things to talk about."

And so a few months after Big Time Rush gives its last official concert, while Rocque Records is making more money than even Gustavo knows what to do with, after James has less-than-accidentally and less-than-subtly leaked his intention to branch off on a solo career during an interview—that's when the calls from managers and agents all over town start pouring in.

"I appreciate the offer," James tells his brand-new hands-free set, for what seems like the thousandth time, and winks at his new manager again, "but I'm covered."

Katie tries to hide her smile as she glances over the notes she's made so far. They've got work to do.

* * *

After the Palmwoods, the four of them get an apartment together. James is busy almost every day. Logan talks, sometimes, about applying for med school out east, but for now he stays—for James, for all of them—and Katie understands even if she doesn't, because she's never needed anyone as much as the four of them need each other.

Shortly after she turns eighteen, they throw a party, and it's kind of a Christmas party and kind of a celebrate-James's-success party, but more than anything it's because they can't let go of the way things have always been. (The apartment itself is colorful and crowded, with a bright orange couch and a swirly slide in one corner. "You're going to have to grow up sometime," Katie tells Carlos, when she first sees it.

"Never," he retorts, but his eyes say: I know.)

The apartment is flooded with more people than it should rightfully be able to hold: old Palmwoods friends, semi-celebrities, people that James has met over the course of his comparatively short solo career. Some of them are people Katie's never met before, and she considers heading over and handing them her card—but no, she decides, not tonight.

Camille raves to Dak Zevon, loudly, about how amazing his recent work has been. The boys sing karaoke and exchange secret glances and laugh about nothing.

For the first time in years, Katie thinks of Minnesota—because this sort of thing doesn't usually cross her mind, but for whatever reason she wonders how different her life would be if had stayed, considers the possibility of no Gustavo or Griffin or Jo, of Kendall still pushing shopping carts, of Katie still flipping past pictures of celebrities in magazines instead of chatting with them next to the punch bowl in her brother's apartment.

And then James offers a toast to the greatest manager in the world, and Katie grins and decides that it doesn't matter. Not really.

The evening winds down and people start to leave, and eventually it's just them, like it's been for a while now, settled around the living room and enveloped by a bubble of vaguely intoxicated silence. Katie's mother is in the corner with a glass of wine, and Camille perches on the arm of Jo's chair, and Gustavo is almost asleep on Kelly's shoulder, and Kendall has his arm around Logan and Carlos and James's fingers are intertwined, and no one says a word.

Katie watches it all, for an instant, and then something occurs to her, and she grabs for the camera on the side table.

"Oh, god, I look awful," Jo protests vaguely, but she's laughing, and she doesn't. Katie takes the picture.

(She prints it out the next day and stares at it for a minute before she writes "My Family" on the back, in pencil, and puts it in her desk drawer. Just in case.)

As she closes the drawer, she remembers what Kendall had said about her not having a normal childhood, remembers Melissa Mansfield and her first day in Hollywood and James's flamboyant signature on that original contract, and she smiles silently to herself again.

She_ didn't_ have a normal childhood, she knows, because she's not normal. Because none of this—any of this—is normal. But she'll get by; all of them will.

It's the only life she's got, after all—and, well, everyone knows the rest.


End file.
